Massive Attack- Ritual Spirit EP review: Moving on from trip hop
Riveting is a word that we hear frequently applied to movies and books. Basically, the implication seems to be that if an art form is narrative in form, being riveting is a most desirable facet.
But Massive Attack is one music act the works of which I have always found riveting.
I couldn’t think of a better word to describe their music back when I discovered them listening to a CD with randomly written-in songs in the small pad where I was living as a college student, and that facet remains very much the same now when I am on the wrong side of thirty and my mental state of permanent cheerfulness during the college years looks like it belongs to a character in a book than a real person.
I find this true even with 100th Window- their 2003 album that’s widely considered as their weakest effort yet.
My familiarity with the duo of 3D and Daddy G -who are the key members of the band- is through their albums. Ritual Spirit- comprising 4 tracks- which came out in 2016 is the first of their EPs that I have listened.
The first works of music that I listened to as a teen- when I really got hooked on music- were rock albums from the 60s and 70s. That’s music from more than a couple of decades before I was even born. There was no particular reason for me to get attached to that music other than the fact that rock n’roll was rebel music and I was a teen.
But the more I listened to music from that genre, another aspect of the music began to feel more fascinating- the cheerfulness of experimentation. Listening to many of these albums felt like the aural equivalent of a cheerful children’s play- and I don’t mean the cacophony that rises from a children’s playground either.
From a rock-fiend, I started moving to other genres, including jazz and hip hop and Bollywood and folk and classical and world music and more, always with rock as the ‘base station’ that I kept returning to, because nothing excited me like rock.
Until I came across trip-hop, that is.
Massive Attack is not just a pioneer in trip-hop but also synonymous with the genre, defining what the genre sounds in the hey years of 90s and beyond.
In Ritual Spirit, the trip-hop vibe is very much in evidence. But the propulsive quality of the tracks owes a lot to their leaning heavily into electronica. The duo is always open to collaboration and that’s true on this album too- Azekel, Roots Manuva and Young Fathers contributing to various tracks.
All the songs fall in the down and midtempo grove.
However, a streak of barely constrained righteous indignation runs through all the four tracks that sound like they were hand crafted to soundtrack your voyage through a dystopian time in your life.
And since we live in dystopian times, it rarely feels out of place no matter the time of the day you listen to the EP.
Mid or down tempo, you are happy for this rhythm to keep you nodding your head even in the dark times, your attention riveted.
